1 post tagged “manoa”

After two days of nice but not particularly memorable vacation, we headed up to Manoa Valley this morning to hike around at the Lyon Arboretum. I remembered the grounds as being very well-tended and beautiful, which they were indeed, but I had not remembered the explosion of colors and life that we experienced today. I dropped a donation into the box at the visitor center for all of us and we skirted a fifth-grade class on a field trip to head out into the fields and up the cobblestone trail towards `Aihualama Falls.

 I don't think I'd ever hiked all the way to the back of the valley before, but we made there today, even encumbered with a toddler. Hooray for the Ergo carrier. In point of fact, Gunnar held up like a champ; he walked up nearly the whole last mile up, after the improved trail had given way to loose rocks, roots, and damp earth.

The valley was misty and damp, as Manoa is supposed to be, and it was really beautiful to see everything with a sheen of tropical moisture on it. It didn't actually start to rain on us until we'd already made it to the falls and started to head back down. Except for the extra slipperiness on the roots and rocks and the way it seemed to intensify the already-thick clouds of mosquitoes, the rain was not really a big deal. In a way it completed the experience, because the environment is inherently dense and moist and, well, rainforest-y, it was neat to see the rivulets and pools fill up with water; there's a very real sense of the watershed (and, more broadly, the entire island) as an interconnected system.

We took our time hiking back down to the visitor center; came across a hidden buddha and a macaw escapee from the now-defunct Paradise Park; and returned to Andy's for Papa Tostadas and smoothies, muddy, mosquito-bitten, and happy.